


build your house in my heart

by orphanbeat



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Gen, How I Won The War, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Marijuana, Miscommunication, Paranoia, Songwriting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24023008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphanbeat/pseuds/orphanbeat
Summary: ALMERIA, 1966.John is in Spain filming How I Won The War, while Paul composes the score to The Family Way.They find home and togetherness during late-night phone calls.
Relationships: Brian Epstein/John Lennon (implied), John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	build your house in my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure if anybody’s had to go away for work at all, but let me tell you, it wreaks havoc on your self-esteem. Life just sort of goes on without you? People missing you, but also getting on with their lives aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s a wild feeling. Pair that with Johnny’s paranoia and abandonment issues, and voila! You get something like this!
> 
> I completely made up Paul’s trip to Wales. Never happened. Also, there’s mention of Paul’s cat, Thisbe. Not sure if he actually owned the cat called Thisbe at this time, but hopefully he owned a cat that can be blamed for this. 
> 
> Also, I’m sure everyone has heard them, but this really came out of listening to the home demo recordings of Strawberry Fields. Other than John just thinking distortion and synths are cool, I wondered what else I could make up for him that might change the way this song sounded in its early days to how it was released. That’s the clean little emotional thread running through this whole thing. You know, show-don’t-tell ;)
> 
> As always: no defamation intended! This is all fiction, and all that good stuff!

**Almeria, 1966.**

John speaks into a camera, regurgitates memorized words, but all he thinks of is Paul. He wonders if Paul spends his days the same way. Working on that film score with George Martin, but thinking of John. John can’t remember when exactly it started. Paul had called him early on in the shoot with a fifties tune stuck in his head and wracked John’s brain for the artist. 

It was a feeble excuse to call someone, they both knew it, but they didn’t mind the late-night conversation it sprang. John had gone to set the next morning and had fallen asleep in his trailer before they’d even needed him for make-up. 

He notices the moments he doesn’t get to hear Paul’s voice. That’s where he is now. He wonders if he’d always noticed it, but had been too young to acknowledge the significance of it. He  _ misses _ . In every sense of the word. He misses Paul, he misses home, he misses a life that he isn’t even sure he’s ever had. He writes a song to fill in the empty spaces between words he can’t find to articulate what exactly he  _ misses _ . 

_ No one I think is in my tree… _

John finishes work late and he thinks he could be swallowed whole by the Spanish nighttime. He lays awake in the bedroom of the villa that isn’t his. He thinks about his pillow at Kenwood. How perfect it would feel with him right now. He thinks about the pillows in countless hotel rooms around the world. He thinks of Paul in the bed next to him, missing something he can’t articulate either. 

John glances at the clock on his nightstand. By anyone else’s standards, it’s too late. He shouldn’t call. They’ve been speaking to one another everyday, or, nearly everyday. What’s one more phone call? Wouldn’t Paul be expecting him, after all? Without allowing himself too much time to think about it, John dials Paul’s number. 

Paul answers on the second ring. 

“Paul?”

“I thought that was you,” Paul says and John swears he can hear his smile. 

“You did?” John asks, feeling something hot in his chest. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Nah,” Paul mutters. “Well, sort of.”

“Sorry --”

“I’ve been up for an hour. But I had a dream of you,” Paul says. “So, you sort of did.”

“You caught me thinking about you,” John says, the warmth in his chest, spreading to his cheeks. 

“That’s what they say,” Paul says around a yawn. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“I thought I might not be able to,” John says. “A bit pre-emptive, this. We only finished shooting an hour ago.”

“Right,” Paul mumbles. “I forgot you were a movie star these days.”

“Hardly,” John huffs. He lays back against his pillows and listens to Paul’s breathing. He thinks he could live in this moment forever. He closes his eyes and can feel Paul next to him. He thinks this is probably the home he’s been searching for his whole life. He thinks of himself, on that Spanish beach, writing a song about Liverpool, about home, and how lonely it was not being able to find it again. He thinks of himself now, warm as though he were next to a fire hearth. And it’s Paul that’s made him feel this way. It’s Paul that he wants to  _ hear him _ . 

“I’ve written a song out here,” John says before he knows he’ll lose the nerve. 

“You haven’t!” Paul says around a smile. “You’re so multi-talented, John.” John smiles ruefully. “And I thought you were just an actor these days.”

“You’d be surprised by how many other talents I have,” John pokes back. 

“I bet I would,” Paul says, and John thinks, is this how he’d sound if he were speaking with a woman? He hears Paul sigh happily, then he says: “Well, let’s hear it then. Have you got your guitar there?”

“Yeah,” John says. “Gimme a sec,” he continues, lifting himself up off the bed. 

His guitar’s standing up in the corner. He pauses when he sees it, wonders if he really wants this. Really wants Paul to hear this. This song about the home he’s missing so dearly. Will Paul be able to hear it? Will he hear how sad and afraid he is? He shakes his head, grabs his guitar, knows he has to do this now that he’s brought it to light. 

He sits back down on the bed, his guitar in his lap. “I’m still working out the words,” he calls out to Paul. 

“Play the song, John!” Paul shouts back, so John does. He misses home loudly. He misses Paul loudly. It feels unmistakably true and liberating to be saying it to another human being. 

When he’s finished, he grabs the phone and lies back into his pillows; his guitar discarded and forgotten. Paul’s quiet on the line. John feels his hands go sweaty with nerves. “Could you hear it?”

“Strawberry Fields,” is all Paul says, and John smiles. 

“Yeah. You remember it.”

“You took me there once,” Paul says, and John thinks this all sounds like it’s in a dream. 

“I did,” John answers quietly. 

“God,” Paul mutters and John can finally hear that he’s smoking. He smiles and thinks Paul’s heard this song exactly the way he was meant to. “There’s a word for what I’m feeling right now, but I don’t know what it is.”

John laughs lightly. “Have I rendered Paul McCartney without words?”

“Shut up,” Paul chuckles. 

“I miss you,” John hears himself say, then adds: “I miss London.” He knows he doesn’t. 

“I miss touring,” Paul says through a laugh. John groans. “What?” Paul asks defensively. “I thought we were saying we missed things we don’t miss!”

“I was being serious --”

“You don’t miss  _ London _ , John,” Paul says. “You  _ hate _ London.”

“I suppose,” John allows, but what about that other thing? 

As though he’s read John’s mind, Paul says: “I miss you too.”

John smiles broadly and only spends a moment wondering if they ever might have been able to say this to each other’s faces, or if there was something sacred and precious about the way they could only hear one another’s voices. John rolls over onto his side and buries his face into his pillow. 

“Maybe you could come to Spain,” John says into the cotton. He feels his cheeks go hot and red and he holds his breath. Somehow, he can feel Paul doing the same thing in England. 

“Yeah,” Paul breathes out. “Sure, yeah,” he continues.

“When?” John says, ignoring the way he can’t stop grinning. 

“I’ll talk to George Martin in the morning,” Paul tells him. “We’re almost finished with the film, so…” Paul pauses. John doesn’t know why. But when he speaks again, he sounds stilted; suddenly unsure. “Well, I think so anyway. I’ll have to see, John, you know. I might not be able to get out of London.”

“Right,” John says back, but he’s lost him. 

Paul doesn’t come to Spain, but Rich does. In the beginning of October, just in time for John’s birthday. And it’s perfect. John hugs him the way he had after they’d heard themselves on the radio for the first time. And Ringo lets him. There’s been enough space and time between them that it feels allowed. 

Ringo takes one look around John’s rented villa and says: “It’s like Miami.”

John smiles, looks around too, sees it the way Ringo’s seeing it and he feels twenty-four again, in love and elated, excited and on top of the world. 

They sit out back, looking at the ocean, drinking beer and smoking Ringo’s good weed. John realizes he’s smoked too much when he’s halfway through a story that’s got nothing more to it than he spent two hours tucked into his blankets whispering internationally with Paul McCartney. Ringo’s watching him closely; he can probably pinpoint the exact moment where John starts to squirm. 

“He’s mentioned that,” is all Ringo says when John finally trails off. 

“What?”

“That you two have been chatting,” Ringo says, waving his hand lazily. And John thinks he must either not understand the gravity of it, or understand it too well. John, still in his Gripweed glasses, studies his friend in the purple light of the sun going down over water. He looks for the answer. “I think it’s good,” Ringo says, then he looks up at John, and  _ there _ . John feels something hard in his chest.  _ He knows _ . 

John looks out at the setting sun. He can still feel Ringo’s eyes on him. So, he nods, knowing full-well he’s not getting out of this one. “It has been good,” he says, then feels too rosy and vulnerable for his own good. He snatches himself a cigarette, and mutters, “I don’t know,” as he lights it.

“He’s been good too,” Ringo says. He doesn’t say:  _ happy. The way you’ve made him _ , but John hears it anyway. “Keeping busy the way only Paul can.” John smiles fondly, seeing Paul, giddy with music brimming inside of him. Gone to this world until he’s brought the melody to life. And then happy to go home. Not to see Jane Asher, but to spend an hour in bed with John, feeling him closer than he actually is. “He’s up in Wales right now with that Tara Browne,” Ringo continues, and John feels the breath dry up in his lungs. “You remember that bloke?”

“He’s where?” John somehow manages. 

“Wales -- Tara’s Da’ has a camp home up there, or something,” Ringo says, and John can’t stop seeing red. “You know, I bet he’d come here if you asked him,” Ringo says with a smile, jabbing his cigarette in John’s direction. “While he’s still got the time.”

“I did,” John seethes, pulling his knees up towards his chest. He fills his lungs with nicotine, hoping he might choke on it. 

“You what?”

“I  _ did _ ask him,” he says again. Ringo sinks back against his chair, realizing he’s put his foot in it. He looks away from John, fidgets with the buttons on the front of his shirt.

“He told me he couldn’t get out of London,” John says, and Ringo’s shoulders dip; he knows it was naive to think that John Lennon would let something like this go. “How long has he been gone?”

“John,” Ringo tries. He holds his hands up in surrender. John scoffs, knowing a middle child playing Switzerland when he sees it. 

“How long has he been gone?” John asks again. 

Ringo sighs, sees John’s resilience and knows full-well that the only way through this is honestly. “Two days,” he guesses. John nods, putting the timeline together in his head. Paul had known he was going to be away when John asked him to Spain, or… John chews on the inside of his cheek and roughly stubs out his cigarette on the glass tabletop. Or, Tara had asked Paul after John had and Paul had made a choice. He’d chosen Wales over Spain. Tara over John. “It was all very spontaneous,” Ringo offers, as if that might make it better. 

“Prick,” John mutters. 

“John --”

“You know,” John blusters. “I’ve never liked that Tara Browne --”

“He’s alright,” Ringo says, and John wires his mouth shut. 

“Prick,” John says again, and he isn’t exactly sure who he means: Ringo, Tara.  _ Paul _ . 

“What is this, mate?” Ringo asks softly. 

“What?”

“This reaction,” Ringo explains. “What is this?”

John feels himself go red. He grabs his lighter, sets it and snuffs it, over and over. “What do you think it is?” he says, not taking his eyes off the sloshing waves in front of him. 

He hears Ringo sigh, then say: “Do you promise not to hit me?”

John glances back at Rich, who just looks sorry. John feels twenty-two again, accused of loving Brian, and knowing full-well that it was true. Twenty-two and terrified of what that could mean. Of dying alone and unloveable. Of prison. Of looking too closely at his own heart and finding nothing inside. But Rings doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t look put-out. He still just looks  _ sorry _ . So John just shrugs. 

“You don’t know how to not love things,” he says vaguely. “You’d give it all if they’d just let you.” It’s as much about Paul as it is about everything else. John thinks there must be a bright light inside of him that he’s put down to its coals, but strong enough still that Ringo can see it when he smiles. And maybe he wants to spark it alive, let that white light shine from behind his teeth, but he’s afraid of what it might mean when there are people who won’t be able to look directly at him. 

He  _ wants _ Paul to look directly at him. Or, to keep doing it. He thinks he could run into that ocean, scrub himself clean with salt water and Paul would still love him. Even with Paul and Tara in Wales, John thinks he would still love him. 

“Do you love him?” Ringo asks quietly, breaking up that thought as though he were reading John’s mind. And John realizes that nobody’s ever asked him that. He’s never actually had to give a point-blank answer. He’s always thought that the answer might be too complicated, but it all feels rather simple, so he just says: “Yes.” And he thinks, this feels like the beginning of something new.

\--

John is miserable when Ringo leaves. And he knows exactly why. Home had found him in Almeria and then had gone. Home has never been a place, or hadn’t felt that way for years. Mendips was no longer home. And Kenwood… Kenwood had walls and a roof, and so much empty space that John thought it might bury him alive. 

He stares down the barrel of the camera and thinks: all he’s doing is committing his own insecurities to film. He imagines a cinema of people looking directly at him and can’t stand it. His skin itches with it. He thinks of Paul, back in London, looking directly at him. It settles something behind his rib cage long enough for him to get through his day. 

“Play that song for me again,” Paul tells him on the phone that night. He sounds honey-sweet with sleep. John can hear him smiling, and John smiles too, knowing he’s the one who’s made this happen. Somewhere, a voice tells him to ask about Wales, but he’s just happy and high enough to ignore it. For now, he’ll ignore it.

“What song?” John asks. 

“The one about home,” Paul answers, and John feels something take root inside of him. The song about home. That home he’d built somewhere inside Paul’s heart. So, he gathers his guitar, knowing he’d do anything Paul asked him. 

He strums a chord, and leans down towards the phone receiver laid carefully on the bed. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes!” Paul shouts, not realizing John’s got his ear next to the phone. John giggles, strums a few more chords, then plays the song about home.  _ About you _ , John thinks. He can hear Paul quietly humming along, and John thinks he’s lost. In this moment, he’s lost with Paul, somewhere on a telephone wire, high above where anyone might see them. 

As the last chord rings out, John lays himself down next to the phone receiver and just listens to Paul listening. He heaves a deep breath and hears Paul do the same. 

“You’ve finished,” Paul says breathlessly. 

“I have.”

“I love that song,” Paul says, and John can just see him -- eyes closed, a small smile. Feeling as at home as John does. And John thinks,  _ this is easy _ . Living this way. He smiles, feeling bright and open, and thinks Paul sounds so unafraid. “I can’t wait to record it --”

“Paul,” John says over him. “I love you.”

They both go quiet at the same time. So quiet, John thinks the line could be dead. He holds his breath, knows Paul’s heard him. John feels something tracing up his spine, up the back of his throat, and he thinks that if Paul doesn’t speak, whatever it is might kill him, so he says: “Why did you go to Wales with Tara Browne?”

He holds his breath while Paul fumbles for an answer. “John, I --”

“Did you not want to see me?”

“No, I…” He trails off, but John wires his mouth shut, forcing Paul into a corner -- forcing him to put words to whatever this is. “I just thought I needed some time away…” 

He stops himself short, but John asks anyway: “Away from what?” When Paul doesn’t answer, John feels his heart beat twice. “Almeria is  _ away _ , Paul.”

“I know that,” Paul snaps back. 

“Then away from  _ what _ ?”

John feels himself shiver when he hears Paul’s voice in his head:  _ from you _ . He thinks, they don’t even have to be looking at one another to pass thoughts back and forth anymore. 

And to Paul’s credit, there  _ is _ a crash somewhere in his room at Cavendish. John hears it. 

“Oh, shit,” Paul mutters. And John can hear it in his breathing: he’s moving to stand up and leave this conversation where it lies. 

“What happened?”

“Thisbe’s gone up on the armoir, she’s knocked everything over,” Paul mutters. 

There’s a tightness in John’s chest, something cold and afraid. He needs to keep Paul’s voice at his ear. “Did anything break?” John hears himself asking petulantly. 

“Well, no,” Paul answers distractedly.

“Then leave it,” John pokes back. “Can you just --”

“I really should clean this up,” Paul says, without even listening to him. “John, can I ring you back?”

“No, Paul, just --” But then the line’s dead. Quiet and detached, and John feels more alone than he has in years. He hears his own voice, knows it’s in his head, but marvels at just how far-off and tinny it sounds.  _ Get him back, get him back, get him back _ . He sees himself, just as he was when he was sixteen years old, hands shaking, trying to get his mother on the line when she hadn’t opened her door for him. 

He rings Paul back, and it rings through. 

John had thought he’d wanted to hear Paul’s answer. Now, he just feels sick with what Paul might have said. 

\--

They go four days without speaking to one another. It’s the longest they’ve gone since John flew to Spain. John’s in knots; work is horrible. He sings that bleeding song about home to make it feel like he’s gone somewhere he actually belongs. 

_ Paul _ calls  _ him _ and John has to wonder if that’s a victory. 

“I’ve got a new song,” Paul tells him carefully. There’s an  _ I’m sorry _ behind his words somewhere, but John chooses not to hear it. “It’s about home too. You made me write it. Or, your song did, I don’t know…” John hums a sound of acknowledgement, but can’t help but feel that there’s another conversation happening here. One that only Paul is privy to. John just wishes he’d say what he really means. “I’ve just been thinking about home a lot, since we…” 

_ Say it _ , John thinks miserably, but then Paul just trails off, so he instead he says: “Yeah.”

“Well, you’re back in a couple days,” Paul says, and for the first time, John thinks he’s keen to stay in Almeria. “I’ll show it to you then. It sounds best on the piano.”

“Sure,” John says. 

There’s a pause on the other side. John knows he isn’t reacting the way Paul had hoped he would. He isn’t offering that support and excitement that Paul had all those weeks ago when John had approached him with what felt like the most personal song he’d ever written. “John?” Paul says softly, and John isn’t exactly sure what he sounds like. Sad? Tender? Sorry? Whatever it is, it’s all bad. In John’s head, it all means:  _ I don’t love you back _ . 

“How’s Martha?” John asks harshly. 

There’s another pause, then Paul says: “What?” and it’s in such a wounded way that John wonders if he’d misread the situation. Either way, it’s too much of a risk. He can’t hear it:  _ I don’t love you back _ . 

“Martha,” John explains casually. “Never thought I’d say it, but I miss that furball.”

“She’s…” John can actually see Paul shaking his head, trying to suss out what this all means. “She’s fine? I don’t know, John, she’s a dog.”

“Yeah, well,” John sighs. “This is the sort of thing you think about when you’re waiting for cameras to be ready for twelve hours a day.”

John hears Paul sigh into the phone; it feels so private a thing -- so sad and defeated that John thinks he’s heard something he shouldn’t have. “You haven’t enjoyed the film then?” he asks, reluctantly following John’s lead and changing the subject. 

John feels decidedly safer this way. He feels rooted in this place with Paul.  _ Work buddies _ , discussing the day’s wages. “Not really,” John answers honestly. “Spain’s nice though,” he continues. He swears he can hear Paul bristle, as aware of the last time John spent quality time here as John is himself. “I’ve always loved Spain.”

\--

Paul’s already behind the piano by the time John arrives at Abbey Road. 

George smiles up at him warmly, happy to see him, but not ready to be back at work yet. His heart’s somewhere else, and John can’t help but think his is too. Ringo is leaning up against the piano with Paul, but he stands when he sees John. He goes to him and envelopes him in a big hug, even though they’re the ones who have seen one another most recently. 

Then, John glances down at Paul, who doesn’t stand, but he’s smiling up at John. He looks nervous, like he’s been rehearsing this moment for days. 

“Hullo, John,” he says.

“Go on, then,” John says, dumping his bag down at the leg of the piano. He sits down on the stool next to Paul, feels that familiar warmth of someone close. And he thinks, it’s this feeling. This is exactly what he’d missed all those weeks in Almeria. “Show us this new song of yours.”

Paul blushes, but he still turns towards the keys. “It could be the B-side to yours,” Paul says, tinkering a few keys, before he launches into the song. 

It’s bright and nostalgic in all the ways that John’s isn’t. It’s a song about home; but it’s not even Paul’s home, it’s John’s. John thinks of himself and Pete Shotton on the schoolbus when they were kids. He thinks of Julia, doing her shopping, and Stuart gathering art supplies, and he knows the song’s done exactly what it was meant to do. He feels something deep inside of him start to tremble. Some voice that doesn’t even belong to him says:  _ yours is no good _ . 

Paul smiles when he’s finished, then he looks to John for his approval. 

John thinks that if he stays here another second, he’ll never be able to move again. So, he lifts himself to his feet and gripes: “That’s not a B-side.”

He feels Paul’s eyes on his back as he digs out his guitar from its case, but he can’t bear to look at him. 

\--

They record Strawberry Fields a few days later. John stays behind with George Martin to give it a listen. It’s just him and his guitar and John thinks he hates it. All he can think about is that bright nostalgia of Penny Lane. 

“We’ll have to double-track that,” John says around his cigarette when his voice sounds too much like it belonged to him when he was five years old. 

“Why?” George Martin asks. 

“Because I want it to sound tinny,” John explains flippantly. “Like it’s not me. Like it’s… Far-off, or something.”

“Why?” George asks again, and John has to bite his tongue to keep himself from saying that he’s the boss here. Instead, he just shrugs. “I think it works as an acoustic song,” George coaxes. 

“I don’t,” John says. 

“It’s very strong in its simplicity,” George tries again. “It’s beautiful, John.” John just rolls his eyes, and wonders what word George will use when they record Paul’s. “You don’t think so?”

John starts to bounce his foot, keeping his eyes anywhere but on George. Who’s just  _ looking _ . Seeing him. And he thinks what he’s about to say has never felt more true: “It feels like everyone is looking directly at me.” He turns to George then, who doesn’t turn away. They look at one another, until John thinks of his Uncle George for the first time in years. He looks away, looks down at the control board in front of him and ignores the way it goes all glassy and foggy. “Make them look through my music.”

He doesn’t say  _ please _ , but George hears it. He nods, looks down at the controls now himself. “Okay, John.”


End file.
